背景:自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)是一种复杂的神经发育疾病,其特征是社交和认知能力受损。尽管流行,缺乏用于识别ASD个体的可靠生物标志物。最近的研究表明,ASD患者大脑功能连接的改变可以作为潜在的指标。然而,以前的研究集中在静态功能-连通性分析上,忽略时间动态和空间相互作用。为了解决这个差距,我们的研究整合了动态功能连通性,局部图论指标,以及一种特征选择和排序方法来识别ASD诊断的生物标志物。
方法:人口统计信息,以及静息和睡眠脑电图(EEG)数据,收集了20名ASD患者和25名对照。EEG数据被预处理并分割成五个子带(Delta,Theta,Alpha-1、Alpha-2和Beta)。功能连接矩阵是通过计算一致性创建的,并确定了每个信道的静态节点强度指标。滑动窗口方法,随着不同的宽度和移动的步骤,用于扫描EEG系列;计算动态局部图论指标,包括平均,标准偏差,中位数,四分位数间的范围,峰度,和节点强度的偏度。这导致每个指示符的95个特征(5个子带X19个通道)。使用支持向量机递归特征消除方法来识别最具鉴别力的特征子集。
结果:具有3s窗口宽度和50%移动步长的动态图理论指标实现了最高的分类性能,平均准确率为95.2%。值得注意的是,意思是,中位数,在这种情况下,四分位数之间的指标达到了100%的准确度,所选功能的数量最少。所选特征的分布显示出对额叶区域和Beta子带的偏好。
结论:3s的窗口宽度和50%的移动步长是动态图理论分析的最佳参数。额叶和Beta子带中动态局部图论指标的异常可能是诊断自闭症谱系障碍的有价值的生物标志物。
BACKGROUND: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopment disease characterized by impaired social and cognitive abilities. Despite its prevalence, reliable biomarkers for identifying individuals with ASD are lacking. Recent studies have suggested that alterations in the functional connectivity of the brain in ASD patients could serve as potential indicators. However, previous research focused on static functional-connectivity analysis, neglecting temporal dynamics and spatial interactions. To address this gap, our study integrated dynamic functional connectivity, local graph-theory indicators, and a feature-selection and ranking approach to identify biomarkers for ASD diagnosis.
METHODS: The demographic information, as well as resting and sleeping electroencephalography (EEG) data, were collected from 20 ASD patients and 25 controls. EEG data were pre-processed and segmented into five sub-bands (Delta, Theta, Alpha-1, Alpha-2, and Beta). Functional-connection matrices were created by calculating coherence, and static-node-strength indicators were determined for each channel. A sliding-window approach, with varying widths and moving steps, was used to scan the EEG series; dynamic local graph-theory indicators were computed, including mean, standard deviation, median, inter-quartile range, kurtosis, and skewness of the node strength. This resulted in 95 features (5 sub-bands × 19 channels) for each indicator. A support-vector-machine recurrence-feature-elimination method was used to identify the most discriminative feature subset.
RESULTS: The dynamic graph-theory indicators with a 3-s window width and 50% moving step achieved the highest classification performance, with an average accuracy of 95.2%. Notably, mean, median, and inter-quartile-range indicators in this condition reached 100% accuracy, with the least number of selected features. The distribution of selected features showed a preference for the frontal region and the Beta sub-band.
CONCLUSIONS: A window width of 3 s and a 50% moving step emerged as optimal parameters for dynamic graph-theory analysis. Anomalies in dynamic local graph-theory indicators in the frontal lobe and Beta sub-band may serve as valuable biomarkers for diagnosing autism spectrum disorders.